Category Archives: family outings

Last weekend we all had a great time. Swimming and piano lessons Saturday afternoon followed by dinner out, then all day Sunday at an amusement park/facility with another family, ending with an early supper and kids’ TV show before bed. … Continue reading →

Last week, my youngest daughter turned 5. Because three of us (both daughters and myself) were recovering from the mumps, we cancelled her birthday party and rescheduled it for the 14th. As a reward to both girls for their hard … Continue reading →

Friday, my two daughters (aged 7 and 4) and I set off on a four-hour bullet train (Shinkansen) ride without my wife. She did see us off at the Shin-Osaka bullet train station, but since she had a week-long business … Continue reading →

Tomorrow is “Coming of Age Day” in Japan, when 20 year olds celebrate officially becoming “adults” in Japanese society. Today, my family went to a performance by a local civic group of The Ugly Duckling, billed as “a moving story … Continue reading →

New Year’s lasts one night of drinks and one day of college football in the US, but in Japan the holidays lasts for three days. Actually, for many the New Year’s holidays start on December 29th, giving the typical worker a … Continue reading →

After a series of fairly serious blog posts related to an ongoing complaint against Amazon (which was somewhat, but not entirely, resolved), I thought it was about time to post about a slightly more innocuous topic: Making pottery at the … Continue reading →

Since my daughter was a baby, she’s been obsessed with rabbits (usagi, in Japanese). We first had a stuffed sheep doll for her, but she quickly became enamoured of a musical pink bunny whose cord she could pull to start … Continue reading →

Categories

Dad Bloggers

Recent Posts: M Thomas Apple Author Page

This is not a complaint about Netflix in general (well, not necessarily, but anyway). Without Netflix, I might have gone, shall we say, a little… …this past winter. I’ve been working temporarily in Montréal, several thousands miles of miles apart from my family, and being able to watch movies and older TV shows has been […]

After completing its first year of observations in the southern sky, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has spotted some intriguing new exoplanets only 31 light-years away from Earth. Um. “Only” 31 light years. One planet is 22% larger than Earth, has a surface average of around 490ºF, and a year of just under 4 days. […]

In February of 2017, a team of European astronomers announced the discovery of a seven-planet system orbiting the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Aside from the fact that all seven planets were rocky, there was the added bonus of three of them orbiting within TRAPPIST-1’s habitable zone. Since that time, multiple studies have been conducted to determine whether or […]